Posted
by
BeauHDon Sunday March 27, 2016 @05:01PM
from the that's-a-lot-of-data dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Digital Trends: Engineers at the University of Illinois have set a new record for fiber-optic data transmission, breaking previous theories that fiber optics have a limit in how much data they can carry. The engineers transmitted 57Gbps of error-free data at room temperature. The group, led by Professor Milton Feng, improved on its previous work in 2014, when it achieved 40Gbps. The keywords here are "error free," which is what makes this research unique from others that claim faster speeds. Fang said, "There is a lot of data out there, but if your data transmission is not fast enough, you cannot use data that's been collected; you cannot use upcoming technologies that use large data streams, like virtual reality. The direction toward fiber-optic communication is going to increase because there's a higher speed data rate, especially over distance."
Engadget writes in an update to a similar report: "Reader Tanj notes that this is specifically a record for VCSEL (vertical cavity surface-emitting laser) fiber, not fiber as a whole."

Even if it was for VR, I suspect it would be very easy to get away with literally streaming your game from scratch with only a 50mbit downstream link. They could always adopt the approach Blizzard uses to allow WoW to be played long before you finish downloading all of the game assets, and with a 50mbit link, it would be totally seamless.

Going by the book [loc.gov] definition of 10 TB. (conveniently bypassing the question of digital archives) According to Wolfram Alpha a microfortnight is 1.21 [wolframalpha.com] seconds. 57 GB/s is 68.97 GB/mFn. Divide by 10,000 and you have:

Excuse me, but even after reading the linked article it eludes me how this is an advancement over existing technology like 100GBase-ZR [juniper.net] EtherNet lines (operating at ~ 120 Gbaud per fiber)?

Not quite. Those optics use DP-QPSK, which uses mathematical magic to cram 4 bits worth of information into one symbol. This means the optics only need to operate at 25Gbps to supply a 100Gbps line rate.

DP-QPSK is a whole load of magic I don't understand.

If DP-QPSK can be used with this technology, it seems to imply 200Gbps optics are not too far away.

The article is terrible so we don't really know what was done to achieve the results (other than it was a single fiber). Also QPSK actually only doubles the symbol rate as it sends 2-bits of information per symbol (4 possible permutations).

No, seriously, I do. I like it when I have to double click to highlight a word, right click, search, and then figure out which result is most meaningful. I learn new and interesting ways to break things.

100GBase-ZR achieves its 120 Gbps line rate by using a complex modulation scheme to encode 3 bits per symbol. 2 bits are transmitted using QPSK and 1 bit is transmitted by choosing either horizontal or vertical polarization.

The issue with long-haul transmission is that you only have a limited bandwidth available which works with optical amplifiers and avoids the water "dip". It's common to use DWDM techniques to cram multiple individual streams onto a single fiber. This yields just under 100 usable chann

That was using multiple wavelengths on multiple fibres. This appears to be one wavelength on one fibre. Different kettle of fish.

"Researchers from the NEC Labs in Princeton, NJ, USA, and from Corningâ(TM)s Sullivan Park Research Center in Corning, NY, successfully demonstrated ultra-high speed transmission with a capacity of 1.05 petabit/s (1015 bits per second) over novel multi-core fiber that contains 12 single-mode and two few-mode cores by employing the advanced space division multiplexing scheme a

Its NEVER single fiber. Its always two strand (two fibers) one TX, one RX. DWDM requires one fiber for each lane.Anyhow, nobody lays optical cables with 2 strands for long range networks.Its always 12-288 strand cable. And 12 stand is being really cheap. 36 strand is a more common low end.So a 36 stand cable allows for 18 DWDM systems, 1 Tbps each, or 18Tbps of bandwidth on a low end cable.This is another case of state of the art (regardless of cost) advancing, which someday will trickle down to real world

At home, I pay for 12 and get about 14. Honestly, that's more than adequate for my needs.:/

I do wish I could actually throttle it back a little and use some of it for upload as upload is only about 1.5 Mb/sec, averaged out. I'd go down to 10 down for 5 up. I'd still be fine. I host all sorts of things off it. I hang stuff off the network like a Christmas tree - though I do have three disparate lines and everything on the network is actually heavily locked down BUT I am, technically, using it right now.

"At a hundred million megabytes per second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta...” -William Gibson, Neuromancer